


And We Will Stumble Through Heaven

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Series: Prompt Fills [71]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Dark, F/F, F/M, Jealousy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:47:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28774056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: The Master has never liked sharing his oldest friend, particularly with a species as backwards as the human race. The fact she continues to waste her time with silly, laughable creatures with short lifespans and fragile life forces is an ongoing source of irritation to him, and while he enjoys plotting to rid himself of the problem, he becomes fixated on one particular Impossible Girl, and curses his past self’s foolishness…
Relationships: The Master & Clara Oswin Oswald, Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Series: Prompt Fills [71]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/585397
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	And We Will Stumble Through Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> From allnewtpir's prompt:
> 
> _We have a fic where the Dhawan!Master hits Clara with the TCE to no effect. I would like to see the Master's reaction as he realizes Clara truly can't die. Preferably a bit of actual fear._

The Master has, without any shadow of a doubt, always preferred the Doctor’s pets when they have a finite lifespan. Ideally literally, but if for one reason or another he’s able to murder them gruesomely, he’s happiest when they leave the Doctor of their own accord; three broken hearts is almost as much fun as two hearts filled with righteous anger and murderous intent. Both are glorious fun to play with; he still remembers, with a swooping sense of pleasure, the panic in the Doctor’s voice in the 3W Institute, upon fearing Clara to be dead; still remembers how glorious it felt to think that perhaps she might be, and that the Doctor might have been about to unleash the full force of his fury and violence in the name of getting her back. It’s perhaps an unnecessarily complex way of getting his oldest friend’s attention, but it passes the time.

It passes the time in the most delicious, messy, reprehensible of ways; devious plots and schemes have always been what he’s best at, after all, and while he isn’t fan of getting blood on his natty suit – or indeed, any of his outfits; the dry cleaning costs are _astronomical_ , and having to vaporise the poor hapless beings who do it to stop them asking questions is a bore – he wonders sometimes how it would feel to ensure that the Doctor’s friends wink out of existence in the most primal, visceral of ways; wonder how it would feel to kill in the same way that humans kill. Wonders how it would feel to take a life with casual nonchalance; wonders how it would feel to do it accidentally, claiming not to know his own strength. It would be almost laughably easy, he supposes; humans are so ridiculously fragile that it’s a wonder they survive into what they pitifully describe as ‘old age’ without puncturing something or rupturing one of their internal organs at a crucial moment. That thought triggers an entire line of side-thoughts of their brutal, savage way of reproducing, and he suppresses a shudder. Yes, how the human race have got this far is questionable, and not for the first time he laments his failed plan of two incarnations prior; laments the fact that he could have recreated the entire world in his image, and indeed would have, were it not for the Doctor’s intervention. One of their holy books purported that the human race had been made in God’s image; if he had succeeded, surely he would have been a god in his own right? Surely he would have been worthy of that epithet?

He’s worthy of it now, he reasons. What is a god, if not vengeful? What is a god, if not one who metes out punishment for perceived injustices, cutting down children and the sick and the old in the name of righteousness? Was that not what he had done on Gallifrey? He had burned them all; burned every last one of the twisted, depraved, disgusting individuals who he had the misfortune to share biology and an extended family genome with; burned them all as they slept or cried or snivelled or begged for mercy, which he had sometimes promised them for the sheer joy of watching their disappointment when it never came. _Mercy_. Had they treated the Doctor with mercy? Had Tecteun treated her with mercy or compassion or any of the attributes that so much of the galaxy prescribed as ‘maternal’ when she had sought to exploit an abandoned child for her own ends? She had done no such thing; she had made a frightened child into a test subject, and watched with detached fascination as she’d slain the child time and time and time again, forcing them through regeneration after regeneration, in what had at first been an honest quest for knowledge and self-improvement, but had become an obsession; a desperation for fame and power and glory. Tecteun had pillaged the Doctor’s cells; destroyed their childhood; and the Master had been forced to watch it all unfold through the gaps in the walls of the scientist’s tent, occasionally sneaking food or comfort to their friend where they could.

It had been their fault, after all. That initial scuffle, although he had omitted to tell the Doctor so, had been with him; a disagreement over something so trivial that it had been lost in the mists of time. The Master had killed their best friend, and then subjected them to the repeated violations that had come in the name of science, and now he had had his revenge on the civilisation which had stemmed from such vile, invasive, exploitative experimentation. He had destroyed the people who had not only ripped away his friend’s childhood – well, in one lifetime – but the people who had ensured that all he is, all he stands to be proud of, stems from the person who he loves and loathes in equal measure.

He had once been proud to be a Lord of Time. He had bragged of it; he had used the title to convey power, fear and might to unworthy races. He had laughed as lesser beings had trembled before him; revelled in the relative immortality that regeneration afforded him. He had relished the way that _Time Lord_ or _Gallifrey_ bought him wide-eyed stares and disbelief and won him instant respect. He had even enjoyed the fact that his dearest oldest friend was similarly unkillable; a modern-day Prometheus whom he could enjoy maiming, wounding, torturing and occasionally – though seldom, for while it pained him to admit it, it hurt too much – kill. But now? Knowing the truth is unbearable. Knowing that in his very veins, every part of who he is has been shaped by the Doctor’s plundered DNA, is repulsive. Knowing that all he had once so enjoyed about his species and their very nature had been ripped from an unconsenting, terrified child is so abhorrent that he can scarcely comprehend it. He wants to scratch his own skin off. He wants to rip away his own flesh and delve deep into his DNA, removing the mutation that must have been injected into him with such force and trauma he has blanked it from his mind. He wants to unpick his very chromosomes; wants to force apart his cells; wants to split the atoms that constitute him, because the self-loathing that imbues him from head to toe is almost too much to stand.

He had always wanted to be special; always craved it; yearned for it; sought it out. He had styled himself a god, after all, and now he is one; now he rises as the glorious destroyer of Gallifrey, statuesque as he stands in the ashes of his own people. But to know that all that he had considered ‘special’ had been stolen? Well, it was little wonder he had done all he had; little wonder he had laughed as Gallifrey burned. He had entertained the notion of aping Nero and serenading the flames, but instead he had walked through them, letting them lick at his clothes and his skin with passive acceptance, ignoring the pain as his clothes had crumbled away and he had paced through the inferno entirely nude, his eyes wide and deranged as the fires had symbolically cleansed the parts of him that no amount of water or science or DNA engineering ever could. The Time Lords had needed to be destroyed; had needed to suffer; and if doing so had made him a god, then he would bear the title with pride.

But what does he have to show for it? Has he the Doctor’s attention? No. For all he has done in her name, all he has received in reciprocation is one attempt at murder which she had aborted when faced with the reality of what she was about to do; one attempt at murder that had instead been carried out at the hands of one of her precious pets. The Death Particle had, for unknown reasons, spared him; allowed him to continue living, continue hating, continue plotting against her. Perhaps that is why; perhaps something so born of war had recognised the hatred within him, and saw fit to allow him to continue to exist. He’d encountered his oldest friend since, but she’d barely acknowledged him; flicked him away and foiled his schemes with something akin to bored resignation.

He loathes that.

He loathes the fact that the Doctor will hardly look at him; loathes the way her eyes widen when he forces her to. Loathes the way her lower lip trembles when he throws around words like ‘genocide’; loathes the fact that she has committed far worse in her own name, but seems hell-bent on punishing him for doing the same thing of his own accord. Loathes the fact she insists on keeping her ludicrous pets around, captivating her attention.

She’s always had a predilection for a human companion. At first, he’d wondered if it was purely driven by lust or a misplaced attraction to human females. Now, he understands it; she adores being looked at like a deity; adores being worshipped; adores being revered. She’s not so different from him, not really. She doesn’t like to be alone, and she refuses to accept the inevitable; they could travel together, hand in hand, and she would never need be lonely again; he wouldn’t treat her like the higher being that she thinks she is, but as long as she showed suitable deference towards him then perhaps it could work. But no; she favours pathetic human friends, with their mayfly-esque lives; favours mere children uneducated in the ways of the universe. Well, children and… her.

Clara Oswald.

The Master is consumed with self-loathing at almost all times; it eats him up; it burns through his veins. And yet his loathing of his past self and the ‘gift’ she had given the Doctor in Clara Oswald? There are days when he wonders whether he ought to construct a rudimentary neural block and use it on himself, the way the previous stupid fool of a Doctor had, to forget giving his oldest friend Clara Oswald. A foolish, stupid, uncommonly altruistic idea; one that had been intended to cause pain, ultimately, and drive the Doctor back towards Missy. And of course, it had failed; the Doctor had shown where his loyalties lay, and almost destroyed all of time by doing so. And Clara? Well, Clara is still bouncing around the universe, caught between heartbeats and unable to die. It’s sickening. It’s repulsive. He wants the satisfaction of feeling her die; of watching the life leave her eyes and watching the Doctor ignite with violent rage; of her hands landing on him and-

It can never be. Even when he’s used weapons on her – weapons which he had invented, weapons which give him such a thrill to use that it’s bordering on primal arousal – she’s refused to stay dead, and the fury that evokes in him is unfathomable. She won’t die. He will never have the pleasure of seeing her shattered, empty body fall to the floor and remain there; of watching the Doctor keen with agony over her twisted corpse. He might be able to eradicate the other three imbeciles the Doctor so enjoys spending time with, but he wonders if she would even register the fact; wonders if they would hold little significance to her compared to Clara. In idle moments, he thinks about how he would do it; despite his avowal to avoid physical, human-type murder, he has to admit the idea is appealing, and he wonders how it would feel to use his hands on them; to fight as humans do; to slide a knife between their ribs or slit their throats and watch their eyes dim as their blood pulses away through their useless, scrabbling fingers. It’s an inelegant, messy prospect, but definitely promising; he sometimes finds his hands straying into his pocket towards the knife strapped to his thigh, and considers using it. He thinks he might keep the girl; she’d seemed enamoured by him while he was in disguise, and perhaps that could be useful; he smirks as his mind wanders, and tries not to allow himself too much time to entertain such notions lest he risk becoming complacent. Murder first, kidnap second.

In other moments, he plots elaborate schemes to bring about their doom; grandiose plans in which the Doctor must choose to save them or the world. The thought of watching her have to make that decision is so singularly, intoxicatingly appealing that he has to take an afternoon off; he can hardly stop himself from flying to Sheffield and enacting the plan at once. It makes him dizzy to think of it; dizzy and empowered and a thousand other things besides. But always, always, always there is Clara; the eternal problem of her continued existence.

If he’s honest, the idea of her frightens him. She will serve, he knows, as the Doctor’s moral compass even if he does manage to slay the rest of her pathetic little gaggle of pets. She will hold the Doctor back and whisper sweet nothings into her ear; will remind her of her ‘humanity’ – what a preposterous notion – and stop her from the violent revenge he so craves. He wonders about throwing her into a supernova; surely even she could not survive that, but the idea is complex and dependent on so many things that just thinking about it hurts his head. No, it is far more fun to consider all the ways he would like to try killing her, even with the knowledge that her death is impossible. He makes a list, and within hours it’s three hundred and eighty-four items long, and that’s not including the torture methods, which he’s made into a sub-list.

It’s satisfying, yes, but not as satisfying as attempting some in person, and so it is without regret that he taps out a command system on his TARDIS console and fires a torpedo at a minor planet in the Ikros system. A moment later, the screen flickers to life, and there she is; the Doctor, incandescent with rage. He suppresses a nervous giggle, and a moan.

“Really?” she asks with exasperation. “You’re really going to make us come over there and deal with you?”

“Oh, yes _please_ ,” he purrs. “Counting on it.”


End file.
